Blueberry Juice
by Cometpluto
Summary: What if they never found a cure for the nighthowlers? And what if Nick got shot? This explores these ideas (Bad summary I know)
1. Chapter 1

"What are you going to do? Kill me?" Judy hissed. "No…" She giggled with her high-pitched voice. "Of course not!" Bellwether said, chuckling. "He will." A second later, she had shot him. He fell to the ground, convulsing. Judy lept over to him. "Oh, Nick!" She spoke to Nick. The orange fox was coughing, and was apparently in a lot of pain. "Yes, please!" She started speaking to the police department over her phone. Judy looked at Bellwether. "There's a savage fox in the Natural History Museum, and officer Hopps is down! Please hurry!" She cried out. "No… Nick. Don't do this, fight it!" She said, trying to sound positive. "Oh, but he can't help it, can he?" She paused for a second. Judy had an angry grin on her face as she looked at Bellwether. "I guess predators are just biologically predisposed to be savages." Bellwether replied. Nick stood up, growling as he did so, but his eyes were… different. Smaller… Judy knew what this meant. Judy knew he was faking it, but Bellwether smirked with glee. In an instant, Nick turned to Judy, his teeth bared. Judy knew what this meant.

Run.

She made a dash to the far end of the exhibit.

Bellwether laughed as Judy back away to the wall of the exhibit, and she watched Nick tear that woolen deer apart. He was playing it off perfectly.

"Gosh, think of the headline. Hero cop killed by savage fox." Bellwether said. Nick was done tearing the deer apart, and he started to come towards Judy, and Judy backed up against the wall. "So that's it..." Judy started. "Pray fears predator and you stay in power?" She looked up to see Bellwether smiling. "Yeah, pretty much." She gave a quick answer. "It won't work!" Judy hissed at her. Bellwether laughed again. "Fear always works…" She started to explain. "And I will shoot every predator in Zootopia, to keep it that way." Nick approached within an inch of her face, growling. "Oh Nick…" Judy continued to act scared. "No… no…" She went away as much as she could. Bellwether laughed once again. "Bye-bye, bunny." She had an angry expression. Nick lunged for her...

"Blood, blood, Blood! And, death." Judy said, falling limp. "Alright, now you're just milking it." Nick said, smirking. "Besides, I think we got it. We got it, yackity-yack." Nick looked at Bellwether. "You've laid it all out beautifully." Bellwether was dumbfounded. "What?! B-but I shot him! He went savage!" Nick grinned. "Oh, are you looking for the night howler serum? It's right here." He said, reaching into his pocket. He felt around for a second. "I could've sworn I put it in here…" Judy's face fell. "Nick… you don't have a pen in your pocket, do you…?" She said as she noticed a blue smudge over his pocket. Nick's pupils went smaller and his instantly put his paw over the blue smudge, and once he looked at his paw, he saw a blue liquid on the tips of his fingers. Bellwether smirked at them. Nick was shaking at this point. Bellwether started to laugh. "Looks like your plan went wrong." She chuckled at the end of that sentence, and turned around to see the ZPD officers surrounding her. She jumped and she also started shaking, but Nick was really scared…

"Carrots…" He started. Judy's ears went up and she looked into his eyes. "I feel…"

And then he passed out, and fell to the ground. "NICK!" Judy shouted and ran towards the orange fox on the ground. She put his head into her paws. "Nick…" She was hoping he was still alive.

"Hopps!" Chief Bogo shouted her name. "Get away from him." He said, in his usual deep voice. "He needs me!" She cried, still leaning over Nick. "He's hurt!" He gave her a angry stare. "You saw what happened to the other predators." She sighed. "I'm still not leaving him." She knew that she would make Bogo even more angry by that response, but she cared too much about Nick to even think about the consequences of her saying that. Almost as soon as she finished speaking, Nick turned to her. She wanted to be happy, but his eyes told her that it was a better idea to run. Nick bared his teeth at her, in the way she had seen in the other savages. Judy thought that it was better to listen to Bogo. She couldn't look at Nick in this way. "Nick…" She thought she could still talk to Nick normally, that there's still time. Before she could even react, Nick growled and jumped at her. Judy kicked him away. It was no show now. It was her and a savage fox. She looked around for a way to escape, and there was nothing she could do apart from wait for the officers to help her out. Other officers were already jumping into the pit, pinning Nick to the ground to stop him from attacking. He flailed, trying to get at the officers, but they had pinned well enough that he couldn't. One of the officers instantly pulled out his tranquilizer and shot him in the neck. Judy tried to see Nick one more time, but the officers prevented her from getting close. "Let me see him!" She hissed at the officers. But they didn't let her. They started to drag her out of the exhibit, she was that desperate to see Nick one more time. "What are they doing to him?!" She shouted at Bogo, looking him in the eyes. "He's savage. What do you think?" He responded to her.

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 **Author Note: Thanks to SplashDaFox for helping me write this chapter.**


	2. Chapter 2

It had been two months since he was shot. No matter how many times she saw him, it never got any easier. To see her best friend, a savage… It just was almost too much to bear. Every once in awhile, she could almost swear she saw a hint of the old Nick behind those crazed eyes. "Look! Did you see that? He recognizes me!" She'd say every time he looked her in the eye.

"Ms. Hopps, that is simply his natural instincts. He thinks you're threatening him." Was the response she'd get every time from the attending doctor. Slammed back into reality. She knew he couldn't recognize her, but she visited him every day after her patrols.

"Oh Nick," she said, putting a paw to the glass. "If I could have you back, even for five minutes…" He looked at her. Her ears perked up momentarily. Just before she was about to say something, he ran into the corner of his cell. She sighed. She was beginning to wonder why she thought he would ever be "normal" again. "It was…" She paused. "It was good to see you again." She sighed. As she got up to leave, the doctor put his hand on her shoulder.

"I understand how difficult this must be for you." He said. "We are trying the best we can to figure out a way to reverse this. Until then, this is the best we can do."

"I understand." She said. "It's just… How could this happen?" As she stroked her ears back, Nick wandered over to the glass side of his cell. As he put a paw to the glass, Judy again had the feeling that he understood what was happening. "Thank you doctor."

On the subway ride home, she simply stared out the window. She didn't want to think of much of anything. As she was recollecting the day's events, her phone rang. It was her parents. "Hi Mom. Hi Dad. How are you?" She sighed.

"Hi sweetie! We're good. How are you?" Her parents responded in their typical happy manner.

"I'm fine. Visited Nick today. I think he recognized me, but the doctors say not." Judy said.

"Honey, we know how difficult this is for you. But you really should try and do some other things as well. You don't seem as energetic as you used to be." Her mother said, a sympathetic yet cautious tone in her voice.

"It's fine, mom. It's just that I miss him so much. I feel like he's still here, but he's not. He's some…" She began. "Beast." The words pained her to speak. Was that all he was, some mindless animal, destined to forever live in a cage? It couldn't be. "I need to get going. Talk to you later." Just before her parents responded, she hung up.

"Now approaching Grayson St. Station." The automated PA system said. She was so caught up in her own thoughts she hadn't noticed she was the last animal on the train. As she walked up to her apartment, she kept thinking about Nick putting his paw on the window. Did he recognize her? Or was she just so desperate that anything he did looked like something else?


End file.
